Egg Hunt

Easter was a very good day in our house.

The little ones didn't sleep good the night before so everyone in the house was a bit on the foggy side all morning. Very mellow.

I made us all a HUGE breakfast of french toast, hashbrowns, sausage, bacon, and fruit salad. Debbie K. eventually joined us and she brought over some of those amazing muffins from Westside Bakery. Add to that Black Forest ham, zucchini bread and butter nut pound cake - we had more than enough food for the day. In fact, the leftovers should last all week.

The skies were dark and the forecast predicted rain after 11am. So my neighbors and I had a two backyard egg hunt with all of our kids. They had such a good time! Logan was not exactly sure of why he should be picking up the eggs, so Bob let him open one and eat the candy inside. My kids have huge sweet tooths, so they got the hang of it really quickly.

Katya played Easter bunny this year and did a great job of putting the 100 or so eggs all over the backyard. It is nice to finally be able to let the kids roam our huge expanse of a backyard. Watching them trudge across our yard with their baskets in hand was pretty cool.

The post-egg hunt nap was pretty sweet too. What a great psueudo-lazy day!

Playtime With Logan

With Alexis going to preschool in the mornings, this frees up some time for me to do some one on one with my litte dude.

While Alexis was in her first day of preschool, Logan and I spent the morning together.

We started off having breakfast together. I had to kind of mesh that with a Campfire event meeting, but he didn't seem to mind.

Afterwards we headed over to the children's museum only to find it closed.

Sooooooooo, we then high tailed it over to the High Desert Museum. We had such a nice time there.

Logan loved just standing there watching the salmon in their stream swimming. And then there were ducks... and some other birds... and some statues - I had a hard time getting him to go inside the building at all.

Once inside he loved the turtles and the Lynx. The Lynx was lounging in the sun and kept staring at Logan through the glass. He just kept saying "kitty". Yup, that was a really big kitty. Then we walked all around the outside and this included the bird exhibit. We learned what owls sound like and he was totally enamored with the Golden Eagle. He was jumping around his enclosure and spreading his wings to catch the breeze. They are beautiful birds.

The River Otter exhibit was his favorite and I had to eventually leave because he kept trying to climb into the enclosure. My little monkey boy.

We finished off our morning with an oatmeal cookie and juice before we headed to the car to go and get Alexis.

All week we played. We hit Barnes and Noble as well as the Children's Museum.

I know that Logan will be ready for preschool all too soon, so I am enjoying this time with him.

It's All A Matter of Perspective

To me... I see a lot of work. Hours of sorting, washing, folding, dripping dry, putting in drawers and hauling loads up and down the stairs.

To them... they see quicksand, a hidout, a soft spot to rest, soft things to throw around, undergarments to put on their head and walk around the house growling like tigers, and endless giggles.

I have to remember to try harder to see what they see.

Cupcake Party

Last weekend we had a little BBQ get together thingie to mark and celebrate the babies birthdays. They are too young to have friend parties, so we just use it as an excuse to have our neighbors and friends over for good food and some visiting.

Things I learned at the party:

1. The babies are very VERY good at opening presents now

2. Alexis really, really, really likes to blow out candles. In fact, she blew out her cupcake candle four times before she let us sing for her and THEN blow it out. Then later that night she blew otu the same candle about another ten times.

3. Cupcakes are evidently best eaten from the top down.

Toddler Follies

I was downloading pictures from my cameras (I still haven't looked at the CDs from David yet) from the Christmas holiday so that I could organize and share them all with you. If a picture is worth a thousand words, these tell what life has been like with the little ones for the past week.

Princess Alexis

Logan coming up with new and creative ways to play with the little kitchen

Breaking her arm doesn't keep her off the trampoline she fell off of

Logan cruising on his little Kawasaki - Bob can't wait to get them on dirtbikes

Shoveling Snow

The snow had been piling up and I really needed to attempt to get our walkway and driveway clear of snow before the next dump tomorrow. Bob is out of town, so this job falls to me.

I figured that this would be a fun way for the kids to play outside and me to get some snow shoveling done.

Logan wanted nothing to do with it. He still doesn't like the snow very much. I hope that I can get him to warm up to it as winter progresses. He eventually just went down for a nap so Alexis and I stayed outside.

Alexis LOVES the snow. I had bought her a red plastic shovel and she was hard at work shoveling snow for me. She was flinging it everywhere.

Then she told me that she wanted to make a snowman. I have to admit, being from San Diego has it's disadvantages sometimes. I've never made a snowman. I just started dumping snow from the driveway into a huge pile and Alexis would pat it down. I was attempting to make the bottom ball, but it looks more like a snow blob than anything else. Maybe a snow butte.

Eventually Alexis got cold so we went inside and she is now cuddled up under a blanket watching "Tinkerbell" for the umpteenth time while her boots dry in front of the fireplace.

What an excellent way to spend the day.

Decorating The Tree

Tonight I decided that I was tired of looking at our poor ornament-free Christmas tree. I had a rough day trying to juggle the kids and a whole lot of pressure to get stuff done at work. I am mentally tired and since it is "kid time" again, I figured I'd do something they would like.

I had already put on the lights (Katya revolted this year) and I figured that I would just put some of the big bulbs on it, wrap the tree skirt and put some of the wrapped gifts under it to make it a bit more festive.

Katya is in Aloha tonight for a basketball tournament (yes, Aloha, OR) so I can't put all the personal ornaments on it, just the base coat.

Well, I turned on the Christmas music to get in the mood and immediately I heard "No singing, Mommy!". I wanted to sing along to my favorite songs and instead of Alexis trying to join along, she just didn't want me singing at all. I sang louder and she yelled louder. What a puke. She was putting a wet blanket on my festive mood.

I ignored her and still sang (although quieter) while I decorated the tree. Then I figured that I would put the angel on the tree.

NO WAY

It made Alexis burst into tears to see the angel sitting on top of the tree. She even went so far as to cover her eyes because she couldn't bear to see her up there. ???? What was all that about?

I guess I get to go buy a star.

I have never had so much backseat commentary when decorating the tree before. Sheesh

When she is old enough, she is doing it all by herself. Lights and all.

The Room Is Decorated

The kids' room is decorated as good as it is going to get for quite a while. I am a bit frustrated that it did not turn out quite as planned due to the frustrating habit that those self-stick borders had of NOT sticking to the walls. Every time I walked into the room it had peeled off. I managed to glue Tinkerbell up, but the Cars border fell down on top of Logan who promptly crumpled it into a nice big ball. Oh well.

Although the room is not exactly what I wanted it to be, I think it is pretty good. Logan's walls are silver and have some of the Cars characters on it. They are still sticking, thank goodness. Alexis' walls have Tinkerbell and courtesy of Elmer's Glue, her border is still up. I had Bob put up a curtain rod and I hung some curtains to dim the light a bit more for naptimes and it is working well already.

The kids are still enjoying looking at the walls and telling me the names of all the characters on it. I still want to put some stars on the ceiling, but I might have to have someone bring them up from San Diego at Christmas since I can't find them here.

The room itself is pretty small and with the addition of the extra huge car bed, there is no room for playing in the the room itself anymore. Luckily, the closet is a walk-in so they can play in there. It should be a fun and happy room for the next few years.

The Bed Is Here - sorta

On Thursday I got the magic email from Walmart saying that the much anticipated car bed had arrived and needed to be picked up. Bob told me that he would pick it up after work and bring it home. I had a Campfire event to go to, so I left the kids with Debbie K. and figured that all would be well.

I got home and ran upstairs to find Bob huffing and puffing having just finished the bed. I turned the corner of their bedroom to look in and I found - the wrong bed. It was not the bed that I ordered at all. In fact, it is much wider (6 inches) and longer (5 inches) and a solid light blue. Bob was exhausted from dismanteling the crib and hauling all the bed pieces upstairs and putting it all together. Inside he had set the toddler mattress and told me that he just didn't think that it looked right.

That is when I had to tell him that he put over an hours effort into the wrong bed. I had to go and show him on the computer the bed that he picked out and the bed that he put together. The fact that the bed we now have upstairs is in fact more expensive than the bed we ordered finalized Bob's decision that it was good and we weren't going to dismantel the bed, put it back into the packaging, drive it back to Walmart, have to re-order the correct bed, wait another two weeks, re-assemble the crib and go through the bed assembly all over again. Luckily we had a twin mattress in the Art Room so we just dropped it in.

With all that out of the way, we brought the kids upstairs to see the new bed and Logan LOVED it. He kept climbing in and out and he would lean over to look at the tires. Then he would climb out of the bed to touch the tires some more and then climb back in. It was really funny. You can tell by the look on his face how thrilled he was. Bob was there with his video camera catching the whole thing.

I had put Alexis' new Tinkerbell bedding on her bed and she was all into that before she even noticed the new car bed, which was good.

So now this is Logan's new bed. Alexis has already slept with him in it and it is the designated play area for non-sleep times. Although, I must tell you that I have already had to sleep overnight in the bed with Logan to keep him in his bed and Alexis in hers and during naptime. We'll see how long I have to lay down in that thing before the novelty kind of wears off.

I am currently decorating the walls and will post the finished bedroom as soon as I am done.

Pumpkin Patch with MOPS

This year my MOPS group arranged for us to go to our local Central Oregon Pumpkin Company as a group on Thursday. This meant that we got to get the kids in for $5 each and we did a rotation of the offerings that they had there.

We started with a "train" ride. Actually it was a tractor with a train nose attached to the front. The kids LOVED it! We rode around the property and looked for all the painted characters out of the movie "Robin Hood". The trip took us next to the horses in their grazing area and the big chicken and duck coop. Alexis had a fit when we got out of the train and before we left we got to ride it one more time.

Then there was storytime (my kids couldn't have cared less, too young), the petting zoo, the play area behind the petting zoo, and the pumpkin patch. There were organized trips through the maze, but I couldn't keep them both together so we left that early. They had a patch just for school groups with little pumpkins and each kid was able to pick out one. It was a crisp 46 degrees so we bought a hot chocolate and a funnel cake that we shared with the other kids.

Alexis did her level best to avoid ever getting her picture taken and not once actually looked at the camera.

Then the end of the visit was their seemingly favorite part. They found a flat bed trailer and had the best time jumping, singing and running on it. I recorded some video of their frolicking.


It was such a good time and they were wiped out when I put them back in the car to go home.

We are still going back as a family next weekend, but it was a good time for us to go with all the other MOPS moms.

"The" Bed for a Little Boy

My mom keeps telling me that boys are boys no matter how big they might become. Inside, a full grown man is really just a little boy who likes toys, just more expensive ones.

Well, the time has come to put Logan into a different bed. The crib is all of a sudden causing all kinds of problems. Logan tries to climb out (we found him hanging by his fingers once) and Alexis likes to climb in to visit. Or torment. I still haven't figured out which since she likes to do both.

We have an awesome little toddler bed that our neighbor gave us, but Logan would fling himself right out of it. He is an all-over-the bed kinda sleeper. So then that puts us at a twin. Most twin beds are too high and would require a step stool like Alexis has to get into and out of her bed. That is a bit too dangerous for a little almost two year old.

When looking on Craigs list I found a race car bed. Bob didn't know that they made race car beds for little boys in a twin size. Unfortunatly, I missed that one opportunity. Nobody else in Bend is selling a race car bed. Then comes Target and WalMart. I found a cool bed, but it was not exactly cheap. But Bob was all excited about his little boy sleeping in a race car bed. I ordered it from WalMart since they had no shipping (Target wanted to charge me $300 in shipping!) and we pick it up later this month. Bob can't stand the wait. Here is the new bed:

Now, being Mom, I don't want Alexis getting all jealous since she didn't get a princess throne bed or anything. So we sat down and I let her pick out some new bedding on-line. It is arriving from Target and will be put on her bed the same day as Logan's new bed arrives to hopefully mitigate the jealousy factor.

Man, I didn't realize this whole gender specific bed/bedding thing would hit so soon!

Boohbah

I don't know how many of you out there have ever heard of Boohbah - but it is bizarre.

Ginger, Danae, the kids and I all met up at the library and hung out for a while last week. While we were there, I checked out some videos that I saw on the shelves to take home and watch with the kids. I grabbed two of "Kipper the Dog" and one of something called Boohbah.

Boohbah is five alien things that like to jump around and dance and don't talk at all. Evidently it is by the same producers of Teletubbies. Alexis loves it!! She dances around the house with them and has been trying to memorize all of their names.

- Humbah
- Zumbah
- Zing Zing Zingbah
- Jumbah
- Jingbah

This show is bizarre to say the least. It is like Teletubbies on LSD. Lots of bright neon colors swirling around and lots of strange little squeaks and taps. Way wierd. And when they fly, it sounds like they are farting. We all crack up every single time we watch it.

I've seen this one video about twenty times so far so we are needing to go back to the library and find another one for some variety.

But if you want to check out their website and have a good laugh check them out here. If you have little kids, they will LOVE it.

The "N" Word

Someone has learned the "N" word and uses it all the darn time now.

Are you finished with dinner? Nooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Let's go take a bath. No no no no no no no

Smile for the camera! NO NO Nooooooooooooooooooo

It's a lot of fun.

I am trying to teach her No Thank You, like I did Katya. But so far I am totally unsucessful.

Stubborn like bull that one!

My Perfect Hour

I just got a chance to enjoy a perfect hour.

... Both little ones napping in their beds
... Snow lightly falling outside
... Classical music playing in the background
... A hot cup of tea in my hands
... The Christmas tree lit up
... The cats curled up in front of the roaring fireplace
... Me reading a new book

For an entire, quiet, peaceful, relaxing hour. Aaaaaah.

Art is Exhausting

I love art. I love to look at art. I love spending hours upon hours looking through art museums and galleries. I love making art. I love to paint and draw.

However, enjoying these things with the kids is just plain exhausting!

When Katya was little, she hated art of any kind. In fact, she didn't voluntarily make me a picture for my fridge until she was in Kindergarten and she told the teacher "she had a picture she had to get out of her head". Now she is an amazing artist. Yes, I still have the picture.

I admit, I was half way expecting Alexis to follow in her sister's footsteps and avoid art. No siree... this girl wants paints and crayons! Bring it on!! We have already gotten a lot of use out of our little easel for coloring and chalk. And we have done some painting of pumpkins and construction paper. Alexis never wants to stop. Which is great! Which is cool! But it is such a mess!

Today we went to a craft time with my SAH mother's group. We were making little placemats with the kids which are going to get laminated. So, there were paints & brushes, stamps, markers, crayons and stickers. Total mayhem. I wasn't quite expecting all that. I had printed out some pictures from my computer and managed to get them cut out before we left. I left Logan on the floor to roll around and get oogled at by the other little girls while I attempted to help Alexis make a handprint turkey. She LOVED it. In fact, she wanted to paint all over everything. The pictures, her hands, her arms, the table... quite the mess. And just when I got her cleaned up and I was trying to finish her placemat, she went right back to the paints.

Then I had to do one for Logan. I did footprints for him and he giggled and giggled when I painted his feet. He is very ticklish. And while I was trying to get Logan's placemat done, Alexis was all over the art table again.

I managed to throw together something I hope the kids will like to eat off of when they get a bit older. But, man I was so happy to leave. I was exhausted and we were only there for an hour!

Trying to wrangle two kids while one is wielding a paint brush with paint on it is quite the challenge. I think that I could create an entire program for corporate teambuilding. If you want to figure out how to manage a group of people working on different projects - try and manage the same number of toddlers (all with paint brushes and sharpies) in a room of nice furniture. If you can survive that, you could survive the workplace.

High Maintenance

It is a good thing that Logan is cute because he is driving me NUTS!

We are going on a week now of constant whining, crying, screaming and general bellyaching. If I give him 100% of my attention, he is fine. If I try to clean the kitchen, make dinner, pick up toys, feed Alexis or heaven forbid - sleep - he fusses. This week he has been waking up about four times a night so I am getting a bit testy from lack of sleep.

I went to my beloved MOPS yesterday and he kept melting down in the nursery so after 20 minutes of trying to nurse and calm him down he had to accompany me back to the meeting and sit on my lap the last 90 minutes. Not quite the baby-free rejuvenating experience that I had two weeks ago.

This morning I took Alexis to a playdate and left him with Debbie K and she said he was an angel. But then again he got 100% of her attention the whole time he was there. He is most definately NOT the independent type like his sisters.

What do you do to try and force a kid to self entertain?

Is this a phase?

Is this a boy thing?

HELP!

New Carseat

Little Logan is getting longer and the time will soon be here when he can no longer fit into his infant carseat.

Last year about this time I did some research on carseats and the one most highly rated by Consumer Reports was a brand called Britax. And these carseats can work with kids up to 65 pounds. (With my kids they will probably be in third grade before they hit 65 pounds. Ok, I might be exaggerating just a bit.) I had never even heard of that brand, but I found it on Amazon.com my favorite place on the internet. Imagine my surprise when I found lots of fun covers for the carseats! Butterflies, flowers, sport images, swirly colors...etc.

For my car Alexis got one that is peach with pale peach and pink Hawaiian style flowers. It is very pretty and the fabric is a super soft microfiber type material. For Bob's car she got a zebra print.

Well, I noticed that my now favorite brand of carseat is on sale for one week. We're talking $60 bucks off kind of sale - you can't pass that one up. So, I took at look at the available styles for this year. I love having a little boy, but the carseats just aren't as fun as for girls. They had grey with black (too hot in the summer), tan (boring), green w/ brown swirls (Bob and Katya didn't like it), blue with sports logo stuff on it (we don't watch football), lots of college logo and colored ones (no thanks), plain blue (boring) and plain grey (really boring). The only one left that was cute, fun and had some personality that was boy worthy was Cowmooflage. So that is the one that we got for both cars.

It is fun though, isn't it?

Finally!

Alexis is finally sitting in her high chair and feeding herself!

The bowl didn't get thrown to the floor or the contents smeared all over the tray. She didn't dump her breakfast on the seat next to her or put it into her hair like gel. The dog didn't get even one little morsel from her bowl, though he sat like a sentinel under her highchair.

She is actually using her spoon and quite carefully putting her yogurt into her mouth! HURRAH!!

I was starting to think this day would never come.

Multi-Purpose Bed

Dog bed by night and kid bed by day.

Yup, we do things a bit different in my house I’m guessing. We have our pets and wouldn’t get rid of them for anything, but their “stuff” becomes kid toys when the chitlin’s are around.

I can’t blame Alexis for wanting to hang out on the dog bed. After all, it is nice and cushy. When you throw a pillow on it you can recline and watch Sesame Street in utter relaxation. So… it became inevitable that the dog bed would become kid furniture since it is in the living room. Our solution is to put a blanket or old comforter on it during the day (which gets washed frequently) and we try to remember to put it up every evening so that the dogs (and cats) can lay on it at night.

It has also become Logan’s favorite nap spot in the whole house. When he won’t sleep anywhere else, I can put him there and he will drift off and stay asleep longer than anywhere else in the house. I sure hope that he likes a crib mattress. It would look rather strange to put a dog bed in the crib. (just kidding)

Alexis' New Kitchen

The time had come to get Alexis a kitchen of her own. She spends way too much time pulling out all my pots and pans, so I figured she could do that with her own stuff.

I had been looking at kitchens for her, but Bend is so small that the pickings are few. Anything I bought would have to be shipped from Little Tykes, Toys R Us or Amazon.com. The salon where Alexis got her hair cut also sells Kid Kraft toys and they had a toy kitchen in the waiting room that I couldn't pry Alexis off of. It was more than I wanted to spend on a kitchen, but it is solid wood and should last for the next umpteen years or so if we take care of it and store it well. After that it will live in Ginger's shed for when Diana has a baby of her own (many, many years from now).

I bought her a small pots and pans set from the local toy store and she had some pretend food that we bought her in Eugene from Toys R Us so she was good to go! She loves that thing and it will be so easy (and inexpensive) for us to pick up new packages of food and kitchen utensils for her to add to her small kitchen pantry.

Just think... Alexis or Logan could be the future stars of the Food Network!